It is sad enough that this Memorial Day we mourn the more than 4,500 Americans who died in the war in Iraq, and the nearly 2,200 who have given their lives in Afghanistan, in a war that is now in its 12th year. It is even more tragic that among those Afghanistan casualties there are men and women who were children when the war began.
Already in 2010, people were noticing and bemoaning this heartbreaking trend.
In a letter to the New York Times Editor, in August of that year, Mark Hopkins of Cleveland wrote:
To the Editor:
The saddest thing about reading the names of the American casualties in Afghanistan is to read their ages: 18, 19, 20, and 21. They were children when the war began.
Commenting on this sad phenomenon, I wrote, “We know exactly how young these heroes were when the war began. They were ages 9, 10, 11 and 12. By God, they were only babies when the war began!”
I also said, “Just think, if the Afghanistan war continues for another two or three years, those parents who only nine years ago were waving goodbye to their children as they entered first grade may be waving goodbye to those very same children as they board that airplane that will take them to war.”
Today, nearly three years later, the same war grinds on — now our nation’s longest war — and is beginning to claim more and more of those who were our nation’s babies when it started.
In a heart-wrenching story last week in USA TODAY we read about three such casualties of the Afghanistan War.
We read about three young men, Barrett, Zack and Tristan, who were 8, 9 and 11, respectively, when the war began, who “would reach manhood as fighting churned on.”
We read how, “[a]s the conflict in Afghanistan slogs through its 12th year, all three young men have given everything to a war growing longer as they grew up. Zack died in a Blackhawk helicopter crash March 11. Just days before his planned return home, Tristan was killed March 22 by an improvised explosive device. Another roadside bomb mortally wounded Barrett on April 17; he was removed from life support as his parents stood by four days later.”
We also learn that:
When the terrorists struck on 9/11, Barrett Austin was in Mrs. Spearman’s second-grade class here. Weeks later, he’d wear a Ninja costume with a red headband for Halloween.
Tristan Wade was a middle-school practical joker with an endearing crooked smile who told everyone he wanted to be in the Army like his dad, a military policeman stationed near Tacoma, Wash.
Zack Shannon was playing Army in a cul-de-sac where his family lived in Florida. He’d break his ankle later that fifth-grade year on a neighbor’s trampoline across the street.
There is something insane, something very wrong, when some of those who we honor and mourn today were just little kids when the war started.
Read more here about three of our most recent casualties of the Afghanistan War who, in 2001, were “little boys oblivious to the beginning of America’s war in Afghanistan.”
Lead Image: 2008 Memorial Day Poster #3. Created by Virginia Reyes of the Air Force News Agency. US Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Cecilio M. Ricardo Jr.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.